don't Touch That Dial!

radio programming in American life, 1920-1960 J.
Fred MacDonald

Postwar Radio

There can be no doubt that prejudice in broadcasting had been
seriously challenged in wartime radio. Nevertheless, radio was slow to abandon
older patterns. In the postwar period, this would create a climate of
controversy as liberalizing forces sought to maintain the momentum of the early
1940s, and traditionalists acted to preserve much of the past.

Progressive spokesmen were not willing to forget the
developments that had occurred during World War II. As early as Alay 1946, at
the prestigious annual meeting of the Institute for Education by Radio at Ohio
State University, several speakers enunciated a new militancy. In what
Variety termed "one of the frankest meetings held here," several black and
white critics attacked radio for failing to give a balanced picture of
African-Americans as human beings. Speakers, such as Sidney Williams of the
Cleveland Urban League, Gertrude Broderick of the U.S. Office of Education, and
Walter N. Ridley of the American Teachers' Association, assailed the networks
for continually placing blacks in menial positions in their programs.
Specifically, they cited series such as The Great Gildersleeve, When a Girl
Marries, Amos ‘n’ Andy, and The Jack Benny Program, all long-lasting
and popular programs in which blacks appeared as maids, buffoons, or any of the
other minstrel stereotypes. Beyond programming, however, the conferees assailed
other forms of segregation within the industry, including the practice of trade
unions and crafts in restricting black membership, and the inability of black
technicians to find employment in radio. In all, it was a devastating critique
of American broadcasting that placed the blame squarely on the networks,
stations, and unions.

It was not without reason that reformers attacked national
radio. Despite the lessons of the war, most networks and large advertising
agencies, which produced many of the programs, persisted in airing shows that
were demeaning to blacks. Networks and agencies explained their attitude as
being dictated by economic realities. According to their spokesmen, sponsors
were reluctant to finance all-black or racially-mixed programs if white
listeners, the bulk of the audience and the potential customers for the
sponsor's product, would be alienated.

This was especially true in the southern region of the nation
where for several generations whites had maintained effective control of a
segregated society. In the South, network broadcasts from New York City or
Hollywood that did not conform to "acceptable" standards, tended to offend white
supremacists. Thus, a program like Night Life, a CBS summer series in
1946 which featured black comedian Willie Bryant and a racially-mixed cast, was
dropped early because Southern affiliates objected. According to Frank Silvera,
the failure of blacks to mature in network programming was a "touchy question,"
the answer to which lay in the fear by advertising agencies and network
officials of offending the "Southern markets."

Where there was sympathy for the plight of black actors, as
well as an understanding of the economic imperatives of broadcasting, some
suggested segregation as the inevitable answer. In 1950, for example, John
Asher, research director for CBS in Los Angeles, told an interviewer that the
problem of African-Americans in radio emanated from a lack of purchasing power.
"Once the sponsors realize the Negro's purchasing power is great," he asserted,
"programs will be designed to appeal to Negroes.” Although such "separate but
equal" status might have been preferable to exclusion, most reformers desired an
integrated situation in which not only were blacks portrayed with dignity, but
mixed casts performed, and African-American actors were not necessarily assigned
only to black roles.

During the struggle for equality by black actors in the late
1940s, the slightest defeat brought forth stinging rebuke by the proponents of
change. To those entertainers, the thought of retreat to traditional stereotypes
meant a loss for all blacks. No one better epitomized this bitterness born of
desperation than Canada Lee when in 1949 he attacked the "giggling maids,
Rochesters, Aunt Jemimas, and shiftless, lazy individuals" usually portrayed by
blacks. According to Lee:

A virtual Iron Curtain exists against the entire Negro people as far
as radio is concerned. Where is the story of our lives in terms of the
ghetto slums in which we must live? Where is the story in terms of jobs not
available? Who would know us only by listening to Amos and Andy, Beulah,
Rochester, and minstrel shows?

To Lillian Randolph, the traditional roles allotted to
African-Americans did not affect the past, present, or future of blacks. Often a
delegate to the conventions of the American Federation of Television and Radio
Artists, Randolph always spoke and voted against reformist resolutions that
condemned racial stereotypes. She argued that whites proposing such resolutions
were trying to stop blacks from playing these parts, not trying to stop the
roles themselves. Since white listeners would always demand such
characterizations, she argued, white actors would inevitably fill the roles.

Most defensive, however, was Eddie Anderson. To justify his
character, Rochester, he basically denied that there was discrimination in
radio, contending, "I believe those who have shown they have something to offer
have been given an equal opportunity." According to Anderson:

I haven't seen anything objectionable. I don't see why certain
characters are called stereotypes.... The Negro characters being presented
are not labelling the Negro race any more than "Luigi" is labeling the
Italian people as a whole. The same goes for "Beulah" who is not playing the
part of thousands of Negroes, but only the part of one person, Beulah.
They're not saying here is the portrait of the Negro, but here is Beulah.

Despite the controversy, there were important improvements for
blacks in postwar radio. Established talent, like the spiritual group, Wings
Over Jordan, returned to CBS in 1946 after a hiatus of several years. The same
year King Cole Trio Time, sponsored by Wildroot hair tonic, introduced
Nat "King" Cole to a national audience on NBC. Other black musical talents with
new programs in this period included Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Duke
Ellington, and singer Una Mae Carlisle. In late 1948, Jackie Robinson began his
first radio series on the local station, WMCA; and in little more than a year he
was hosting The Jackie Robinson Show before a national audience on ABC.
Yet, in searching for programming which was more in line with the progressive
thrust of radio during the war, one must turn to the many special broadcasts
aired at this time.

The year 1948 was proclaimed, nationally, as the "Year of
Rededication" in which citizens were asked to recommit themselves to American
ideals. Throughout that year radio carried special programs and series on racial
tolerance that met this request. One of the most controversial presentations
occurred in March, 1948, when Mutual presented a four-part series, To Secure
These Rights, which dramatized the findings of the President's Committee on
Civil Rights. Even before the first program, southern politicians and station
owners cautioned the network about possible reactions in their region.

Though Mutual modified its original scripts, the series was
received adversely in the South. During one broadcast, for example, the Mutual
affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi, left the air and re turned when the network
transmission ended. The Conference of Southern Governors, and a group of twenty
southern senators, led by Senator Richard D. Russell of Georgia, demanded from
the network and received three half-hour periods in which to rebut the charges
and implications of the series.

More indicative of postwar attitudes toward blacks in radio
was a special series, Freedom Theater, produced in 1948 at WSM
(Nashville). In this thirteen-part public service show, music was provided by a
traditional country-western ensemble, Roy Acuff and His Smokey Mountain Boys, as
well as by a black chorus, the Fisk University Choir. The series represented the
first time racially-mixed programs had been broadcast from the same studio of
that important southern station.

If Freedom Theater was a breakthrough for racial change
in radio, the appearance of an all-black dramatic theater series on WPWA
(Chester, Pennsylvania) in April 1948, was another advancement for black actors.
These were all small achievements, however. So, too, were the spot announcements
for Brotherhood Week aired by Mutual in 1948. For example, listeners to The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on February 29 were informed at the conclusion
of that program:

This is Brotherhood Week. Let's make it work. Judge every man by his
individual worth, not by some label. Don't spread any rumor against any race
or religion, and don't listen to them either. Speak up against prejudice,
and for understanding.

Yet, as minor as these accomplishments may appear, they still
represent an amazing change of attitude relative to prewar standards. While they
certainly do not reveal a massive shift in national sentiment toward blacks,
they do suggest that the liberalization realized during World War II was
struggling to survive in peacetime.

There were many local programs in the postwar period which
affected significantly the role of blacks in broadcasting. In 1945, WNEW (New
York City) produced several musical programs featuring black entertainers such
as Josh White, Mary Lou Williams, Pat Flowers, and the popular trio, Day, Dawn,
and Dusk. That same station also broadcast the prestigious American Negro
Theater. This series was produced by Ted Cott, a respected white veteran of
radio, and introduced black actors like James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee in
legitimate dramas, adaptations of grand opera, and plays drawn from great
fiction.

By the late 1940s, local black news and culture shows were
aired for the African-American community. Notable in this regard were Tales from
Harlem over WMCA, and The Bon Bon Show, hosted by George "Bon Bon"
Tunnell on WDAS (Philadelphia). Other programs and series at this time took a
more distinctively political orientation, exposing and attacking the root causes
of injustice in American society. In 1945, for example, WIP broadcast for the
Philadelphia Fellowship Commission a series that assailed anti-democratic
institutions, and strongly advocated tolerance, unity, and racial harmony. In
1947, both WSB (Atlanta) through its series The Harbor We Seek, and WINX
(Washington, D.C.) with its Bright Tomorrow, produced memorable attacks
upon the Ku Klux Klan and its fanatical ideals. As an expose of injustice in
America, however, the most striking accomplishments occurred in Chicago.

Richard Durham was the most prolific and successful black
writer in radio. Formerly an editor with the Chicago Defender newspaper
and Ebony magazine, throughout the second half of the 1940s Durham wrote
several distinctive series. Democracy, U.S.A. appeared in July 1946, as a
local show on WBBM, the CBS-owned station in Chicago. This weekly fifteen-minute
series for more than a year dramatized the lives of outstanding black citizens.

In October 1947, Durham wrote and produced the first authentic
serial on the life of an African-American family, Here Comes Tomorrow.
This soap opera was aired three times weekly on WJJD, and it featured the
tribulations of the Redmond family. In the series, however, Durham became more
politically specific than he had been in his first program. Now, blending
entertainment and indictment, he attacked prejudice. Thus, for example, he
caused one character—a black veteran who had downed several enemy airplanes—to
comment ironically, "I thought I could shoot down Jim Crow in the same way."

With the premier in June 1948 of Destination Freedom,
Richard Durham wrote his most mature and sophisticated radio series. This weekly
half-hour series was heard in Chicago on the NBC-owned station, WMAQ, for two
years. Durham prepared more than eighty scripts for it. The programs examined
the careers of prominent black social achievers, focusing upon the manner in
which they came to grips with American racism, and earned fame.

Drawing from black history as well as contemporary events,
Durham dramatized the accomplishments of historic figures such as Crispus
Attucks, Denmark Vesey, and Sojourner Truth, as well as current celebrities like
Dr. Ralph Bunche, Joe Louis, and Adam Clayton Powell.

The series was given an award by the Institute for Education
by Radio, and it received approval from leading state political officials in the
late 1940s. Yet, the best commendation of this remarkable series and its writer
came from Durham, himself, who, when dramatizing the life of Carter G.
Woodson—the man largely responsible for Negro History Week—caused his principal
character to say, “I am the historian who looked to uncover the treasure of
Negro life so that America's goal of equality and justice may be strengthened by
the knowledge of their struggle for freedom in the past."

Throughout the last half of the 1940s, then, Richard Durham
wrote and produced what undoubtedly was the most consistent and prolonged
protest against racial injustice by a single talent in all the popular arts. The
modest gains by African-Americans in radio were not anomalies. In the popular
arts—and in films, particularly—mature images of blacks appeared with frequency
in the immediate postwar years. In motion pictures such as Lost Boundaries,
Pinky, and No Way Out, liberal writers and directors revealed the
consequences of racism. In popular literature and even television at this time,
black themes and entertainers also were noticeable.

Yet, by the end of the 1940s, the liberal movement was stifled
and proponents of further democratization were in retreat. Speaking in September
1950, before the metropolitan New York Council of B'nai B'rith, Joseph
Mankiewicz, the noted film director and president of the Screen Directors Guild,
summarized the position of American liberals, "the new minority," as they
entered a new decade. According to him:

The American liberal—the new minority—is being hounded, persecuted,
and annihilated today—deliberately destroyed by an organized enemy as evil
in practice and purpose—and indistinguishable from—the Communist menace that
fosters and encourages that destruction.... Remember that it is the hope of
this new minority, too, that this world will someday become a world of human
beings and for human beings who live together in decency and dignity. Let
this new minority be destroyed—and this hope will die with it.

The threat which Mankiewicz denounced came from the American
political right. Even before World War II, the House Committee on Un-American
Activities chaired by Martin Dies had been investigating alleged Communist
infiltration in the motion picture industry. When the war ended, that committee,
now headed by J. Parnell Thomas, plus other governmental committees and
bureaucracies, resumed with greater purpose the anti-Communist crusade. In the
process, many prominent radio personalities had their careers thwarted because
of allegations and rumors of affiliations with the Communist Party. Two
prominent black spokesmen for change in radio, Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, were
among those so affected. What was more significant, however, was that the
Congressional probes effectively arrested the progressive reform movement. In
the early 1950s, as the anti-Communist mentality gained increasing momentum,
fear replaced confidence in many who desired greater social change.

By 1950, a person as prestigious as Eleanor Roosevelt felt
compelled to cancel an appearance by Robeson on her television panel show. And
several months later, even the unity of black performers was shaken when Josh
White appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Affairs as a voluntary
witness and denounce Paul Robeson and those "groups fixed up to look like noble
causes which later were found to be subversive." White apparently welcomed the
investigation of his fellow entertainers, as he told the committee how he
regretted that "an effective exposure of Communistic activities in the
theatrical and musical fields had not been made long before now.”

In spite of the policies of anti-Communism and its deleterious
effects upon political liberalism, the condition of blacks in radio continued to
make gains in the 1950s. Impressive in this regard were the efforts of NBC to
improve its relationship with the African-American community. In 1950 the
network employed Joseph V. Baker Associates, a public relations agency from
Philadelphia that specialized in relations with black society. By October of the
same year, top executives of NBC and the Radio Corporation of America were
meeting with racial leaders—including representatives of the NAACP and the
National Urban League—to explain their new efforts in hiring black personnel and
in carefully guarding against stereotyping in program content.

Three months later a second meeting was held in Chicago, this
one attended by three NBC vice-presidents. Following a third meeting in early
1951, NBC released a new code of standards and practices which stated that:

All program materials present with dignity and objectivity the
varying aspects of race, creed, color, and national origin. The history,
institutions and citizens of all nations are fairly represented....
Defamatory statements or derogatory references expressed or implied, toward
an individual, nationality, race, group, trade, profession, industry, or
institution are not permitted.

NBC moved to implement its new posture in January 1952, when
Jackie Robinson was appointed director of community activities at WNBC, the
network's key station in New York City. The network also instituted a policy of
"integration without identification" in its programming. This meant the regular
use of black talent in non-racial roles, an example being Meredith Howard, who
in her regular role in Pete Kelly's Blues neither played an
African-American nor was she identified as one.

By the end of 1952, NBC officials were able to announce the
results of their new policy: 1) a 200 percent increase in the use of black
talent over the figure for 1951; 2) including musicians and members of
performing groups, a total of 1,540 performances in radio by African-Americans.

The positive changes produced by new policies at NBC and other
networks were partially the result of the education of American society by black
and white critics of biased broadcasting. Just as surely, the changes were
influenced by meaningful economic changes that emerged within African-American
society. The development by the late 1940s of a sizable black consumer market
made black society commercially attractive to radio. As early as October 1949,
Sponsor Magazine editorialized about the forgotten fifteen million black
consumers in America, urging radio business concerns to consider servicing them.

The burgeoning African-American market was especially
important in New York City where several independent stations—among them, WLIB,
WWRL, WNEW, and WMCA—were by 1950 locating their studios in Harlem and
broadcasting as many as twenty-two hours each week of black-oriented
programming. In the South, the new awareness of minority consumers was
noticeable in the number of radio stations in which black businessmen owned
stock. According to one study, until 1949 there were no stations in which shares
were owned by blacks; but by 1954, there were several such stations in the
South—these being WEDR (Birmingham), WDIA (Memphis), WNOE (New Orleans), WSOK
(Nashville), WERD (Atlanta), and WBCO (Birmingham/Bessemer).

The development of black consumer potential was impressive to
radio executives. In New York City by early 1952, for instance, a survey
conducted by station WLIB called that potential a "billion dollar plus" market.
This was made possible, in part, because the black population in New York City
had risen 63.1 percent during the preceding decade. National figures, however,
suggested that the economic strength of blacks was not localized. Between 1940
and the date of the WLIB survey, the average income of African-American families
in the United States had tripled, compared to an increase of only 100 percent
among the general population. Figures showed a high percentage of employable
blacks were working, and high school and college enrollments were at record
levels.

In this light, local stations moved rapidly to attract
minority listeners. In New York City, this was noticeable in the new dimensions
in programming being offered. WNEW presented Kitchen Kapers and a sports series
aimed directly at black consumers. Station WLIB directed its efforts toward
black political issues, offering such programs as The Negro World (a
weekly news round-up), The Walter White Show (hosted by the national secretary
of the NAACP), and The Editors Speak (a panel discussion series featuring
editors of black newspapers). New talent like Nipsey Russell was brought into
radio, and many established black stars, like Herb Jeffries and Juanita Hall,
also emerged as radio personalities.

The competition for African-American listeners became so
intense that WLIB in June 1954 was broadcasting sixty-eight hours of
black-oriented programs weekly. While in 1943 only four stations throughout the
country were programming specifically for blacks, ten years later 260 stations
were attracting national and local sponsors to their broadcasts aimed
specifically at African-American audiences. And throughout the country many
stations that traditionally had been directed toward white consumers now
switched their formats and became all-black outlets. Among these stations were
WMRY (New Orleans) in 1950, WEFC (Miami) in 1952, WCIN (Cincinnati) in 1953, and
WNJR (Newark/New York City) in 1954.

By early 1954, radio executives were estimating the black
marketplace to be worth $515 billion. Even network stations were attracted to
this resource and by the mid-1950s had developed black announcers—such as
Wallace Roy at KNBC (San Francisco) and William H. Luke at KECA (Los Angeles),
an ABC outlet—as well as new programming, and technical assistants. In March
1955, for instance, when ABC introduced its first all-black network series,
Rhythm &BluesonParade, it not only had a black host,
Willie Bryant, introducing black acts and conducting interviews, but, Variety
reported, the network converted one of its TV cameramen into an audio engineer
in order to keep the program totally black.

Black entrepreneurs also tried to appeal to the new consumer
demands. In January 1954, the National Negro Network commenced its service to
radio with the premier of TheStoryof Ruby
Valentine, a soap opera starring Juanita Hall and sponsored by Pet Milk and
Phillip Morris. This network also set up several other short-lived series,
including It's a Mystery, Man, featuring Cab
Calloway; The Life of Anna Lewis, starring
Hilda Simms; and it planned for a fourth serial to star Ethel Waters.

Two other companies were formed at this time also seeking to
appeal to African-Americans. NegroRadioStories planned to
introduce four new all-black soap operas: My Man, Ada Grant's
Neighbors, The Romance of Julia Davis,
and Rebeccah Turner's Front Porch Stories.
And Broadcast Productions, a Chicago-based organization, sought to have Jesse
Owens host a radio series.

Clearly, blacks had experienced by 1955 a tremendous
alteration in their relationship to American radio. The combination of liberal
politics, a declining radio audience, and the lure of the multi-billion dollar
black economy after World War 11 had produced a significant change of attitude
on all levels of broadcasting. Yet, in terms of program impact the most
significant development was the appearance in the mid-1950s of rhythm and blues
as a national musical phenomenon relying upon radio for its mass dissemination
through scores of radio disk jockeys.

Rhythm and blues was nothing more than the most recent
emergence of race music—the name applied since the 1920s to the blues and jazz
recordings performed by, and produced for, black consumers—that had developed
following the war. The music was based primarily upon blues structures, offering
simple variations and interpretations. Yet, the emotionalism of the music, in
terms of the pulsing rhythms and the manner in which singers and
instrumentalists performed it, proved irresistible with younger black listeners
and soon with a generation of white urban youth.

The importance of rhythm and blues music on radio was that it
was heard by integrated audiences. While the increase in black programming was
impressive in the 1950s, it still represented segregated radio. Black radio was
a form of exclusion of African-Americans from the mainstream of American popular
culture. But rhythm and blues was a black-and-white enterprise. Until white
singers began to copy their hit recordings, all rhythm and blues artists were
blacks, and their records were primarily distributed in African-American
communities. The small independent companies for which most recorded, however,
were owned primarily by whites. And white teenagers who purchased these records
helped to change the course of American cultural and social development.

Between 1948 and 1955, dozens of radio stations in the
metropolitan areas of the United States developed a new breed of disk jockey to
play and promote this new black music. Typical of the new breed was Hunter
Hancock on KFVD (Los Angeles) who aired the records, answered requests, read the
commercials, and carried on a running conversation with his audience, all in an
animated, fast-paced, and informal manner.

In a similar fashion, by the 1950s rhythm and blues music was
being purveyed by "deejays" like Phil "Dr. Jive" Gordon on WLIB and WWRL; Al
Benson on WAAF, WGES, and WJJD (all Chicago); Zenas "Daddy" Sears on WOK
(Atlanta); Alan Freed on WJW (Cleveland) and later WINS (New York City). The
music they broadcast—until in the second half of the decade it was toned down,
generally performed by white entertainers, and renamed "rock and roll"—was the
first consistent glimpse of black culture that many white youngsters had ever
experienced. Even after the more commercialized rock and roll music appeared on
radio, listeners could not escape the fact that the new popular music was a
product of African-American society.

This was a crucial development for it occurred simultaneously
with the first victories of black civic leaders in their fight against school
segregation and racial injustice. Legal achievements, such as the case of Brown
versus the Board of Education in which the Supreme Court struck down the notion
of separate-but-equal education, and the use of federal troops to insure the
integration of Central High School in Little Rock, would have been milestones in
the history of the civil rights struggle in America. But coming as they did
during the radio-produced era of rhythm and blues and rock and roll, they were
received by young people with more understanding than might have been expected.
As early as 1955, Howard Lewis, a promoter of teenage dances throughout the
Southwest, reported that rhythm and blues "has become a potent force in breaking
down racial barriers."

Through the new black music that was introduced almost totally
through radio, a generation of white youngsters, protected from black realities
by a tradition of segregation and bigotry, learned to appreciate
African-American attitudes and realities. Dancing, working, relaxing, and
singing to rhythm and blues, white listeners of radio in the 1950s came to know
better than their parents the illogical nature of racism. Within a few years it
would be this generation that would join with youthful blacks to form the
idealistic vanguard of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

By the 1960s, with the diminishing importance of radio in
American society, the issue of blacks in the popular arts shifted to television.
Yet, during the course of the three decades since 1930, important achievements
in equality had occurred in radio. There remained many areas from which blacks
were excluded in broadcasting. But relative to the rank stereotyping and the
obvious discrimination that abounded in early radio, the patterns of prejudice
by 1960 were not debilitating to black talent. Also, by the latter date the
weight of federal law was being applied throughout the society to effect
equitable treatment of African-Americans. That law would become a strong weapon
for change within radio and television.

The posture of blacks in radio—be it the image of blacks, the
issue of race discrimination, or the employment picture for actors and
technicians—improved throughout the postwar period. By the early 1950s, however,
success was actually leading to segregation in broadcasting as all-black
programs and stations lost sight of the more idealistic integrated
possibilities. Yet, with the emergence of black music through rhythm and blues
and, eventually, rock and roll, a healthier balance was achieved.

Certainly, there was a need for all-black programming, just as
there was a demand for other ethnic groups to have their own broadcasts. The
problem was to prevent such esoteric broadcasting from becoming irretrievably
segregated. But by 1960, the potential for a balance between integrated and
all-black programming, free from the open bigotry of the past, had been achieved
in radio.